


How to Fight

by imaginarygirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24237352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginarygirl/pseuds/imaginarygirl
Summary: Alex and Sara have a heart to heart over a bottle of scotch. TW: canon character death, grief.
Kudos: 15





	How to Fight

“How do you do it?” Alex asked.

“Do what?” Sara replied.

“Keep fighting.”

The pair sat in silence for a while, both contemplating Alex’s question. 

This was not the first time they had met up since Barry and Iris’ wedding. They enjoyed each other’s company and had the same taste in scotch. So, whenever Sara came back home for a visit, she’d drop Alex a text and they’d grab a drink. It never came to more than that. The two women were just good friends.

“I don’t give myself the choice not to fight.” Sara replied after a while. They were both a few drinks in to the night and had hit the thoughtful, somewhat existential, stage of intoxication.

Alex turned to face her, looking her in the eyes as a silent ask for an explanation.

“I fight to make up for all the damage I’ve done and all the hurt I’ve caused. I’m scared if I stop fighting I’ll give in to the darkness inside of me.”

“That sounds exhausting.” Alex replied. 

“Hmm.” Sara said, noncommittally, as she finished her drink and set the empty glass down on Alex’s coffee table. “I think it’s about having something to fight for.” She expanded. “I spent so long fighting for survival on Lian Yu and then I went to Nanda Parbat where I was fighting for Nyssa, for our love. When I focused on that I could forget everything else and excuse what I was doing because it was keeping me close to her.”

“And now?” Alex asked.

“Now I’m fighting for redemption. I caused so much pain from the minute I decided to join Ollie on the Queen’s Gambit. I think someone up there is rooting for me because I’ve been given so many chances to make up for my mistakes. Now I want to make the most of the time I have left.”

Alex contemplated this for a minute. 

“I always thought I was fighting for Kara, and for everyone I cared about.” The pain of her father’s death was still very raw, bringing a tear to Alex’s eye as she thought of him. “I thought as long as I had someone to fight for, I could keep going. But now…” She paused. “Now I don’t know if I have it in me to keep fighting when all I see is people around me dying. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”

“I would worry if you did get used to it.” Sara replied. Her thoughts returned to Nanda Parbat and her time with the League of Assassins. “Being a part of the League made death and killing seem normal. Everyone dies, so why get upset about the inevitable, does that make sense?” She paused. “I think a lot of us had to tell ourselves that to survive, because if you were too attached to your humanity you’d never be able to get the job done.”

Any other night, this conversation would have been quickly brought to a halt as one of the women would find something else suddenly incredibly interesting or important to talk about. 

Although Alex knew of Sara’s past, she always struggled to hear her friend talk about being an assassin. The dissonance between the woman she was describing and the person sat in front of her right now was almost impossible to reconcile in her mind. She suspected that Sara sensed she was uncomfortable, but both women had always been too frightened to bring it up. Would their friendship survive that discussion? Sara was so scared of Alex rejecting her if she addressed the elephant in the room, and Alex was certain that she did not want to know the details of Sara’s time with the League. 

Tonight, however, as Alex reached for the bottle of scotch to top up both of their glasses, she decided it was time to open that can of worms. Maybe she’d had more to drink than she normally would, or maybe after everything that happened with Jeremiah she was feeling more open to being vulnerable and brave. Whatever the reason, tonight appeared to be the night. 

“How did you bring yourself to do it?” She asked. “I mean, to actually kill people in cold blood.”

Sara was taken aback by the question, leading her to gulp down her freshly poured drink in one mouthful. The burning of the alcohol hit the back of her throat, giving her the equivalent of a kick up the backside to answer Alex’s question.

“The League’s training was… intense.” She explained. There really was no other word for it. “They knocked all sense of what was normal before out of you and your definition of what was morally right became what they wanted you to think. A lot of people truly started to believe that killing people was the just thing to do.”

Alex was afraid to ask the one question that came to her mind. Did Sara ever believe that? Unsure if she wanted to hear the answer, she let her friend continue.

“I think I, like many members of the League, had a misplaced sense of loyalty. I loved Nyssa and she saved my life; I was willing to do whatever it took to repay her. When ‘whatever it took’ meant killing I don’t think I really took on board what that meant. Between my devotion to Nyssa and the brainwashing from the League killing just seemed a necessary evil.”

“Did you not get upset that you’d taken someone’s life from them? From their family?” Alex asked. “I don’t think I could ever do it.”

This was exactly what Sara had been afraid of – judgement. She couldn’t stand the way Alex was looking at her now. It was as if she had become ‘less than’ right in front of her eyes and it hurt Sara more than she had the words to describe. What Alex had yet to witness was that when Sara got hurt, she fought back. And damn it she could fight! 

In an almost primal, animalistic way, Sara had puffed out her chest and rearranged how she was sat to appear bigger and more threatening than her opponent. How dare Alex judge her for what she did? 

“Do you really think it was that easy? Even after everything the League put me through, do you really think I was killing with no remorse? That I felt nothing at all?” She shouted.

“Sara… I didn’t mean it like…” Alex stuttered. Sure, she knew Sara had a temper and she could fight probably better than anyone Alex knew but she had never once felt scared by her. Intimidated, sure. This gorgeous, strong, deadly woman who had survived more than most people would in a dozen lifetimes; she was definitely a force to be reckoned with. 

“Then what did you mean?” Sara asked, raising her voice even louder. 

Alex took a breath to gather her nerves, and slowly reached out to grab Sara’s hand. The other woman tensed, still subconsciously holding her fighting stance.

“I just meant that I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you.” She said, as softly as she could but with a tremor still evident in her voice. 

A lot was said in the silence that followed, with both women caught up in thoughts about what had happened and how to move forward. Alex nursed her drink, spinning the liquid around in the bottom of her glass and watching it move; anything to avoid looking Sara in the eyes. Meanwhile, Sara was watching Alex intently as if still assessing for threat. She wouldn’t relax until she knew she was safe. As she saw Alex staring into her glass, she slowly started to regain some perspective and gradually her frame began to soften as she saw her friend and not a person trying to hurt her. Years had passed since she left the League, but still she stayed hypervigilant to any sign of danger, physical or emotional.

It was Sara who spoke first, lifting the heavy pause for the both of them.

“It wasn’t easy.” She admitted, feeling uncomfortable with how exposing this conversation had become. “The first few times I killed were… I don’t even know how to explain it. I felt as if after each life I took someone was cutting into my soul with a knife, mutilating it. Like it was for someone else’s sick, perverse pleasure that I was turning into a monster. Afterwards, all I wanted to do was hide away and cry my eyes out until there was nothing left to feel. Nyssa, she helped me through it. She’d grown up in that life and was an expert in pushing all those feelings down to get the job done. People who didn’t know her saw her as heartless but she wasn’t at all. She was a survivor, and she taught me to be one too.”

“Do you think you would have got through it without her?” Alex asked, curious.

Sara shook her head instantly. “Without Nyssa I’d have lost myself a long time ago.” She said.

“She means a lot to you.” Alex commented. They had spoken before about how often Sara thought about going back to her and Alex knew that Sara and Nyssa had shared a deep connection.

“She does, but that was another life. You know the saying that some people come into your life for a season? I think that’s what Nyssa and I had. It was never meant to be forever.”

“And now you’ve got Ava.” Alex smiled.

“I do, and I can’t imagine life without her now. She makes me want to be a better person because she believes that I can be.” Sara replied. “And what about you and Kelly?”

“Me and Kelly are… good.” Alex said.

“Oh no, sounds like there’s some hesitation there?” Sara questioned. 

Alex sighed. “No, not like that. Kelly is amazing. It’s just… she’s another person I can lose. She’d another way for me to get hurt. Right now, after everything that’s happened with my dad, I just don’t know if I can keep putting myself through the chance of losing someone. You saw how I was after Maggie; I can’t go through that again.”

“And what makes you think you’re going to lose her? Come on, Danvers, don’t tell me your sister has the monopoly on hope in your family. I’m sure there’s more than enough to go around.”

“What if I can’t feel hope anymore?” 

It broke Sara’s heart to see her friend looking so despondent. Sara herself had some experience with what Alex was going through. The pain she felt when she lost Laurel and her dad was unimaginable. “You’ve just lost your father, you’re grieving. It’s only natural for you to feel like this.” She tried to explain as softly as she could. 

“It just feels like I can’t carry on. I don’t know how to keep fighting. I’ve tried so hard to see another way out of this but all I see is another battle, another threat, another friend for me to lose.”

“Listen.” Sara commanded. “You, Danvers, are a badass. I’ve yet to see anything you can’t do. But you’re also human and you’re going to struggle and you’re allowed to feel pain and want to hide away from it.”

Alex took a minute to consider what her friend was saying. She had always thought she needed to keep fighting. You fight until you win and you don’t give up, and now she felt that in order to keep fighting she couldn’t be weighed down by the pain of losing people she loved. Alex realised that she had stopped fighting for Kara, for Kelly, for Eliza, for J’onn. She was fighting to win. 

“If I don’t find a way to hide from this pain, I don’t think I can win.”

“What I said earlier about the League wanting to detach you from your humanity to get the job done, you do know they were wrong?” Sara asked. She paused for a moment to let Alex take that in. “I think it’s our humanity, our connections to other people, that can be our strongest motivator to keep going. I know you don’t want to be burned again; I get that. I wanted so much to give up when I lost Laurel and my dad. But now I have my team, and they keep me fighting through the bad days. Yes, I’m looking for redemption but I’m also fighting for them, and alongside them. They make me stronger than I could ever be if I tried to do this alone.”

“Does it get better?” Alex asked.

“It hasn’t stopped hurting.” Sara admitted. “But it gets easier to carry on without feeling like the pain of the person you lost is weighing you down.”

“So, we just carry on.”

“Until it gets easier.” Sara agreed. “And we drink scotch with our friends and help each other deal with the crap life throws at us.”

Alex let out a small smile. “I’ll drink to that.” She said, pouring them both a final glass and placing the empty bottle back down on the table. “To holding each other up and carrying on.”

They clinked their glasses together and threw back their drinks in perfect symmetry. Somehow, Alex felt a little bit lighter. Maybe Sara was right, and things would get better. Alex realised that maybe she was right too, she could still fight for the people she cared about. She didn’t have to shut herself off completely to get the job done. 

On the other side of the couch, Sara found herself also feeling as if a weight had been lifted. She had opened up to someone about being in the League of Assassins and they had accepted her. It was a part of her life she was always so scared to talk about. How could anyone possibly stay friends with someone who had done all the awful things she had? The fact that Alex was willing to go there with her tonight and sit with her while she adjusted to this new level of closeness and understanding with her friend meant the world to Sara. 

“Thank you.” Sara said finally. 

“What for?” Alex asked, feeling as if she should be the one thanking Sara.

“For not looking at me differently.”

Alex scooted over to sit next to Sara and pulled her into a hug. “Nothing you could say would make me look at you any differently. You are an incredible person, Sara. Everyone has a past, and it says so much more about you that you are trying to make the world a better place now than anything you did in the League.”

“I was so scared I would lose you.” She admitted.

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.” Alex smiled. “You’re on my team.”

“And you’re on mine.” Sara said. “Although, speaking of my team I probably should check up on them and make sure they haven’t gotten themselves into too much trouble while I’ve been gone.” She stood up slowly, trying to brace herself for the unsteadiness she knew was coming from all the alcohol she’d had that evening.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Alex laughed.

“I’m fine.” She protested. “I can handle my drink, Danvers.”

“Whatever you say, Lance.”


End file.
